How to create an animation

Objective of the Post

Animation is one of the most effective medium to interact and attract people. I too, was always in search of some software through which I could make an animation on my own and with my own ideas. Though its a very complicated subject but now a days availability of various user friendly software has made this very simple. The only thing is that you have to be creative. So you may also start animating the things.

• The leading softwares in animation industry are 'Maya', 'Flash' (90% animation available in internet sites are built on Flash), 'Google sketch up Pro, 'Blender', '3D Max' etc. Each software has its own specialty and functionality

Here I will be illustrating examples of creating animation on various software. Let's start from Flash:-

• Download the Flash software from the link given below as per your requirement.
• http://www.adobe.com/support/flash/downloads.html
• Open the application.
• Click on Flash actionscript 2.0 or 3.0

• Right Click on Stage and click 'Properties'. select the background colour as you wish, dimension of your animation and the fps (frames per second). Enter 25 in FPS. Remember the higher the frames per second higher will be the quality of animation and the size of file too.

• Now click on Text tool in left tool bar 'T' and click on stage. Type the word anything you like. In my case I have typed 'Alok Welcomes You'. 
• Select the text and change font, colour, size as you do in MS word. See the figures below.

• Now go to timeline and double click on Layer 1. Rename it 'Text'.

 

• Right Click on 100th frame and click 'Insert Keyframe'. Since you have selected 25 fps your animation will be of 4 seconds.
• Again right Click on any frame between 1 to 99 and select 'Create Motion tween'. You should see the figure like this.

• Right click on 25, 50 and 75th frame and click on 'Insert Keyframe' on each of these frame.
• Now Right click on the text you have typed at stage and click on 'Free Transform'.
• Now Click on 25th frame. Change the position and size of the text. Do the same for 50th frame and 75th frame.

• After changing size and position at 25, 50, 75th frame as per your click on 'Control>Play'. See your first animation.
• Now export your animation from File menu to .swf flash file or .gif image file as you wish.
• Flash has enormous possibilities. Don't go with this basic simple animation. Keep experimenting and thinking.